Learn about Lodz

Map and Timeline

Lodz, Poland, was a flourishing industrial city in the mid-1800s
with a successful textile sector and a mixture of Polish, German,
Czech and Jewish inhabitants. Before World War II, a third of the
population of 672,000 was Jewish. Lodz's Jewish residents played
a significant role in the economic and cultural life of the city.

In 1939, after WWII began, the German Army invaded Lodz and
later renamed it "Litzmannstadt." As the Nazi regime terrorized
the city and destroyed Polish monuments, Catholic churches and
Jewish synagogues, many members of the Jewish population fled
to other European countries. In early 1940, the Nazis rounded up
more than 160,000 of the remaining Jews - including Henryk Ross
- and forced them into the Lodz Ghetto. The Nazis then isolated
the Lodz Jews from the rest of the world using barbed wire,
sentry booths and a German police patrol.

The ghetto was an area of less than 4.13 square kilometres situated
in the poorest part of the city. The conditions in the Lodz Ghetto
were atrocious from the start, and steadily deteriorated until
the summer of 1944, when the Nazis sent most of the remaining
residents to death camps.

1939

September 1: Germany invades Poland.
World War II begins.

September 8: The Germany Army enters Lodz,
followed by the Nazi security police.

September 18 - 21: Jewish holidays are
banned in synagogues. Financial transactions
by Jews are limited. Poles and Jews are
rounded up for German labour camps.
An announcement is made that a Jewish
Council will carry out German regulations
in the ghetto.

October 13: Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski
is appointed by the Nazi administration to
the Jewish Council, in the position of Elder
of the Jews.

October 18 - 31: The Nazis expropriate
Jewish property. Jews are restricted from
trading in leather and textile goods. Jewish
trade professionals stage failed boycotts.
Jewish unions and economic groups are
liquidated. Jews are recruited for labour. On
October 28, Heinrich Himmler, Commissioner
for the Consolidation of German Nationhood,
visits Lodz.

November 9: Lodz is officially included in the
German Reich, under the authority of Nazi high
official Arthur Greiser. Nazis carry out brutality
against Poles and Jewish intelligentsia. Artists,
journalists and performers are arrested.

November 10: Polish monuments are
destroyed and four synagogues are left in
ruins (one small synagogue survives).

December 10: Memorandum: Friedrich Uebelhoer, Governor of the Kalisz-Lodz district and "Jewish Affairs,"
issues the first memorandum on the establishment of a "Ghetto in the City of Lodz." He concludes that the ghetto is
"only a temporary measure. I reserve the right to decide when and how the City of Lodz is to be purged of Jews."

December 11: Greiser decrees that Jews are
to be identified with a yellow Star of David on
the fronts and backs of their clothing. Public
transport use is restricted.

1940

March 15: A postal service is established in
the ghetto.

April 11: Lodz is officially renamed
"Litzmannstadt," after the general who
captured Lodz in World War I. Rumkowski
establishes a Jewish police force of 250 officers
in response to orders from the Mayor of Lodz.
Eventually, more than 1,100 police officers
are employed to curb black-market trading
and theft and to fulfil deportation quotas.
The German secret police occupies an office
inside the ghetto.

April 30: The ghetto is sealed off with barbed
wires, barricades and German sentry booths.

May 5: Hans Biebow is appointed head of the
ghetto's German administration, and sets goals
for the ghetto to function as a labour camp.

May 19 - 28: Police presence is increased in
the ghetto. The German police and crime police
suppress strikes and disobedience, and are
given the authority to shoot without warning.

June 12 - 29: A census records 160,320
residents in the ghetto, which occupies 4.13
square kilometres. Special ghetto money, called
"rumki" or "chaimki" notes, is introduced. It
becomes the only valid currency in the ghetto.

October 1: A Central Office for Labour is
established in the ghetto to oversee factories
and workshops that produce clothing, shoes,
textiles and metal for the German market.

October 20: The Central Prison is established
on Czarniecki Street.

November 17: Rumkowski establishes an
archive, which holds documents and
photographs. The Chronicle of the Lodz
Ghetto survives as the most authoritative
source about life in the ghetto.

December 30: Food coupons are introduced.
The death rate increases due to starvation.

1941

March 7: The first issue of the newspaper
Getto Cajtung appears. Between now and
September, 18 issues are published.

May - June 7: The ghetto area is reduced to
3.82 square kilometres. Himmler pays a visit
to the Tailoring Department.

September 21 - October 17: Trams are
introduced in the ghetto. A total of 19,954
Jews arrive from Western Europe. They are
settled in empty school buildings.

November 5 - December 7: A transport
of Austrian Roma arrives, and nearly 4,500
are segregated into a separate ghetto area.
Jews from liquidated ghettos in German
provinces arrive. The killing facility in Chelmno
nad Nerem, 70 kilometres from Lodz, is
activated.

December 16: The Germans inform
Rumkowski that 20,000 people are to be
deported from the ghetto.

1942

January 5 - May 15: Deportation begins,
with 4,500 Roma sent to Chelmno.
Subsequently, 52,304 Jews board freight
trains at the Radogoszcz station and are
sent to be killed in gas vans at Chelmno.

June 1: Rumkowski orders Jews to shave off
their beards and shorten their coats, which
the Nazis consider offensive.

September 4: Rumkowski delivers a speech
to the parents of the ghetto, imploring them
to give up their children for "resettlement."

September 5: A curfew begins in the
ghetto. Residents are forbidden from leaving
their premises, which are searched by Jewish
and German police officers. The police round
up the elderly, the ill and children under the
age of 10, who are considered "unproductive."
By September 12, a total of 15,681 persons,
including 5,862 children, have been
exterminated at Chelmno.

October 1 - December: The ghetto numbers
89,446 residents. Labour in the ghetto is
accelerated, and members of the German
Ghetto Board begin to supervise production.
Relative calm sets in, and two hospitals
are opened due to outbreaks of typhoid,
typhus and tuberculosis. Many residents
die from starvation and disease, and in public
executions.

1943

Adolf Eichmann visits the ghetto. Factories
and workshops continue to produce goods
for the German Reich. Food remains scarce.
About a 1,000 residents are sent to labour
camps in Germany.

1944

March 4 - 10: About 1,600 residents are
deported to work for plants.

June 10: Himmler orders the liquidation of
the Lodz Ghetto.

June 23 - July 17: 7,196 residents are sent on
the last transport to Chelmno. Subsequently,
evidence of the killing facility is destroyed.

August 1 - 29: About 70,000 residents are
deported from the Lodz Ghetto to Auschwitz.
Rumkowski and his family are carried in a
special wagon. Most people are sent directly
to the gas chambers or to labour camps.
A small number of Lodz Ghetto inhabitants
survive their time in Auschwitz.

September: Biebow sends more than 1,000
residents to a concentration camp near
Berlin, and holds back about 900 people to
clean up the ghetto and gather all property
from the empty buildings. These residents are
to be executed after they finish their work.

1945

January 15: The Russian Red Army enters
the Lodz Ghetto and liberates its inhabitants.
Many Jews had gone into hiding when
the deportations began. A total of 877 are
officially recorded as survivors.